


sweet dreams

by orphan_account



Category: Fight Club
Genre: Abuse, Bad Sex, M/M, Violence, Vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 03:10:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is good to you, maybe. (disgusting Tyler/Jack in which Tyler may or may not be real and Jack finds himself horribly out of his depth either way. "As always, I will carry you, kicking and screaming, and in the end -- you will thank me.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	sweet dreams

**Author's Note:**

> illustration by my dear ghostlymobster@tumblr <3

" _and it hits as hard as a blow to the head_  
 _or a smash to the skull or a knee to the chest_  
 _(trading paper cuts for splinters)_  
 _and sweet dreams sweet cheeks_  
 _oh tomorrow, oh tomorrow, oh tomorrow_ "  

\-- sweet dreams sweet cheeks, los campesinos

-

The first time you wonder if Tyler might not be real--not quite, not all the way--it's god-knows-what-day, somewhere in the desolate wee hours you've come to live in, entirely aware of the sun's shame in showing its face to people like the two of you and, in a sense, content with it. You acclimate yourself to the darkness with startling ease, wondering if it could be where you were intended for in the first place, if this is where you belonged before all the rest, if this is what birth took you from, if this is home and you just took the longest road back, so on and so forth; _well, we're the dirt of the world_ , Tyler says to you, laughing, when you express this thought to him, _we're the trash_. He sounds proud. Has he ever been anything but? _These things know to stick together_. 

You're in the bathroom, washing your hands, and the water runs dark: you spit up into the sink and it sits there on the curve, slowly foaming, a barely-red nest of bubbles. There's something indescribably delicate about it. You wonder if Tyler spits-up pink like that when his teeth crack, when his face bruises and his jaw twists beneath his skin, all soft and watered-down; it's hard to picture. Tyler seems nothing less than red. You could peel and prise him open and find his flesh seared from the start--crackling with all his movements like a permanent undercurrent of nervous energy. Tyler is in the shower, and you think the water runs darker still over him than it ever does for you. His wounds open further, his blood comes thicker: everything, more.

_The longest road back_ , you think to yourself, again, and wonder how you knew the way. "Tyler," you say, tilting your head back and squinting your eyes against the dark, following desire lines of damp in the ceiling, wondering when the wood will give for good, "I think I might really be losing it."

"Good," he says--it should be muffled beneath the shower-flow, you think, but it comes through clear as day, clearer than anything, like a knife through fog--and then: "it's about damn time."

-

A little trivia: there is not a single clock in here. It's one of those things, those tiny things that you notice and never discuss because there's simply never a need to; shit like your ability to process numbers breaks down, at such close proximity to Tyler. After all, you reason, it's unnecessary. Tyler is something like a void stripping you of every little thing he judges not quite vital to basic existence. Tyler is a well-built hypocrite. You are far less troubled by this realisation than you imagine you should be.

_You're such a ridiculous fucking contradiction, you know_ , you mean to say, but the words just don't come, the sounds just don't form. Here is what you know about today as of this precise moment: it's light out, too light, painfully so. Hints of the sky pour in through every hole, blinding white against every weathered brick and rotten plank, and it disturbs you to a degree that borders on unabashed paranoia. But this is your last sanctuary, isn't it, here with Tyler, boarded up and sealed away, building wall after wall to keep the bad-air out? It's only natural to be unnerved. The last time you were outside was two days ago, or three, or maybe only one, but you know at least it couldn't have been anything more than three because it came after the last time at Fight Club, and _that_ was, yes, four days ago, you think. It could be less. You could be all wrong. You know, at least, that, whenever it was, you went with Tyler to get food, food or booze, something like that. You're certain of that--there's no landmark quite like Tyler. 

You think it must be somewhere between four and eight in the morning and, immediately, as though he can hear you thinking it--see it in your face, maybe, sniff it out like a damn bloodhound--Tyler kicks you in the ribs. You couldn't sleep, tonight. You'd counted cracks in the ceiling until you couldn't see right and eventually you'd forced yourself up on your feet to drift next door in a teetering haze, Tyler's name on your lips tired and heavy like a plea, and you remember now in perfect detail, more than you could ever need, the way you stood over him and curled your fingers against his clavicle, almost a fist but not quite, and you brushed your thumb over his shoulderblade, meaning to shake him, but, but--Tyler's a light sleeper, or at least, you suppose, he is when he chooses to be, and he woke with a sharp and ragged breath and looked at you very darkly then, not like he was angry but rather like he knew exactly what you wanted, and like he wanted you to see that in him. But he'd made you ask all the same. There's a sort of hypocrisy in that too, you think, even if you couldn't entirely work out what it was at the time.

\-- _Jesus Christ, Tyler_ , you'd resulted to, after a string of failed words all drifted off the same edge in a daze like sheep to the slaughterhouse, struggling to articulate yourself and miserable with the sheer strange vulnerability of it, please, and you're pretty sure that's what did it. In the present, Tyler hits you across the face, backhand; pain bursts all across your face at the touch of his knuckles, like a fire beneath your skin. His lips are moving but you can't hear anything but this one hazy high-pitched note, rooted in the back of your head, rolling out across your entire world, everything buried by the sound of your own brain failing on you.

So, _please_ , you had said, and he'd lumbered out of bed then like some great old dragon, stiff and sleep-addled; he'd knotted his fingers in your hair, hard, and you knew that was it. You followed him out into the hall, a hall, a room with a high ceiling and nothing for you to break, nowhere to hide, and he turned back to you with his hand twisting harder and harder around your hair, jerking your head up, and he--

"Where the fuck _are_ you?" he says, teeth half-bared, like a dog, like a demon. This is the second time you consider that Tyler may not be real. His face contorts in front of you, blurry and dark, like a photo out of focus; you cannot see his eyes. Nausea washes over you in a cold-sweat wave. "Wake up, asshole, wake _up_."

"I'm trying," you say, without thinking, through a stuttering, wheezing attempt at breath, "shit, Tyler, I am, I'm trying." You feel incredibly like a disconnected set of body parts strewn across the floor. It's different, tonight. There's no rush, no burst of energy, no up to come down from: only lethargy, only the slow-motion snap of your bones against Tyler's, only the grind and the wear and the tear. You have no idea how long you've been awake now. You're slumped against the wall and you can't tell where the floor is, or maybe the other way around--everything feels like it's been turned on its side, twisted around in someone's hands like a rubix cube, rearranged and redefined and like somewhere you've never been at all. You think you may be having an anxiety attack. You wonder if Tyler would care, if you told him this. _Good_ , you imagine him saying, the sound of it implausibly far-away, like it's coming in through a light year of radio static, which you suppose makes sense because that is exactly how your mind feels at the moment: full-up with nothing and all the substance struggling to find a way through. _Good_.

"Shit, Tyler," you say again, small as anything, feeling your jaw tremble, wondering how fucked up you'll be by this time tomorrow, whatever time that may be, "please."

"Please what?" he says, and _please, go to hell_ rushes into your head so hard and fast it almost throws you. It's strange, how your thoughts have been working lately--the order's all off. Everything processed takes an eternity to come through but all the throwaway impulsive bullshit heads right to the top. You feel backwards in every possible way.

" _Please_ , just--," you start, but it must be enough, you suppose, just to hear the wailing desperation in your voice, the stripped-down need, the want, because Tyler's knuckles meet the arch of your nose before you can go any further, and all you can do then is lie there enveloped in the sheer suffocating heat of Tyler's existence, breathing halted and pulse drowning out the world, waiting for the dark. Tyler has it in him to be good to you, sometimes. He'll mock you later, you're sure; he'll ask if you're a masochist, if you've only ever hit him back out of courtesy, if that was the best you ever slept, if you dreamt of him with the lines of his hands marked-in with your blood like a map of everything wrong with the two of you, and he'll laugh in that horrible way you think you might hate, that dark way, where he knows, at least, that he's got that last part all right, and he knows about the chill going down your spine and the dryness in your throat and he knows you're thinking: _shit_.

(But for now, he is good to you.)

-

It's evening, and the world is going to pieces. You're back in the bathroom and Tyler's figure is cut sharp as stone against you, this time, the light settles on him like carved with a palette-knife; he's drawn from head to toe with an incredibly unsettling sort of clarity. His hand is on your thigh, knuckles still spotted purple with the residue of yesterday's violence, and you find it startles you now to think in such plain, definite terms as _yesterday_ , past relating to present, order and causality--time's arrow has split you wide open. Tyler has only ever made a home of damage that was there to begin with. His hand is still on your thigh.

"Stop that," you say, are already saying, but it comes out strange, choked and quiet, like there is no conviction behind it--" _stop it_ ," you say again, sharper, harder, louder, desperate. Here is how things came to this: Tyler got you all right, too right, just like you knew he would, like he always does, and your chest had hitched and your hands had stumbled while trying to scrub the blood splatters from your face, water dribbling down your front, listening to him say _I knew it, I fucking knew it_ with his breath brushing thick against your cheek and his face lit up in an all-teeth smile that blazes right through the fog and the dirt of the bathroom mirror and with nowhere in the world for you to look away and you knew, then, even as you turned towards him with your hands and heart alike both balled up into fists, that you had lost, in every single way. You go over this again and again, waiting for it to make sense, wondering how it leads now to you bent back-first against the sink, crushed between him and the wall, knees almost up to your chest, twisted and aching and stomach churning, everything numb, and you think: _Tyler_. Tyler is every blank spot in your life, every void, every inkstain where most inconvenient, every missing frame, every blink-of-an-eye segue, every impossibility, every wrong. Tyler--

Tyler's hand is on your thigh. _No, it isn't_ , you think, but it is, it's pushing and spreading your legs apart and you say, "shit, Tyler, stop it, this isn't funny," but you know right away that it's pointless because this is the punchline to the joke that is your life, is you, and he's spent the longest time setting it up. He's undoing your fly. "This--this isn't--," you keep on saying, stammering, babbling, feeling caught in the verbal equivalent of that awkward, lurching gag that comes just before throwing up--"Jesus, Tyler, Tyler, Tyler, stop, Tyler, fucking _stop_ \--,"

"Fuck, fuck, calm down," Tyler says, rocking forward against you, trying to trap you in ever further; his other hand lies palm-flat against your shoulder, fingers cupping the curve, heel pushing into the edge of your collarbone. It hurts like hell. You consider just how quickly he could dislocate it--how easily Tyler could break you, if he wanted, if for once the point was not the hurt but the harm. "Want me to hit you again, is that it? Would that help?"

You can't breathe. "No, I--Tyler, no, please--," you say, louder than you mean to, voice rising and rising, crawling up into your throat, and you're trying to push him off but your back's bruised numb and it burns like hell just to twitch your shoulders, burns as though the bones are wearing away your skin and you could simply come apart at the stitches any moment now, and you're trying to kick him away but the angle's all wrong, there's no leeway, no give, there's just you and Tyler and your legs straining to fit between your body and his, bent back up against you, trembling and sore, and you say it again, "no," over and over again, wondering if this is just another strange dream, if maybe you can take him to pieces that way, just a sheer lack of belief in him and what he is doing and every little thing about this, from the way the sink-taps stab into the small of your back to the flood of nausea filling up every vacant nook and cranny in you, and you try, you try til it hurts, but you're buried at the bottom of a sea of fog and there's no dragging yourself up out of it. Not this time.

Tyler holds your shoulder a little tighter, bucks against you a little slower, breathing out shushing noises like you're a child in the throes of a nightmare--like he can read your damn mind and wants to make a joke of it. "You've got no fucking idea what you want, do you?" he says, and you have no answer at all, this time, not even the smallest and most useless of words, nothing but a hitch in your chest and a tremor everywhere else. "Sh, it's fine, it's fine. I got you." He hooks his fingers into your trousers and underwear together, edging them up around your hips bit-by-awkward-bit, and when the air hits your skin, cold and stagnant, you cringe; your dick twitches out uncomfortably between your thighs, still the slightest bit hard as Tyler wastes no time at all in getting his hand around it. _Fuck_ , you think, _fuck, why? why did he have to_ know _?_

"I got you," he repeats, knuckles grazing the inside of your thigh, carving out a path of gooseflesh, "shit, you're fine. Just sit tight and lemme take care of that for you. Okay?"

You say nothing. Tyler's fingers tightens a little, flexed around your cock, and you are struck hard with the memory of how he held your hand down to burn it, that time: tense and threatening, inexplicable. "I asked you a question."

There's a blood-rush noise in your head like the sea in a shell. _You always know the answer, you piece of shit, don't keep doing this to me_ , you want to say, but you don't; what you do is you squirm like an insect trying to make itself comfortable around and under a needle and you tell him, "okay," to which he dips his head down to kiss you on the temple, right on the upper corner of the eye, stilted and awkward and strange. "Good," he says, faint breathy laughter against your brow leaving your lashes twitching, "good boy."

Here is the third time you think Tyler may not be real: he's jerking you off with spit on his palms, rough but slow, and you're thinking of a hundred different things, from Marla breathing smoke into your mouth (and how long ago has it been since you saw her last? how long has it been since anyone but Tyler laid a hand upon you rather than a fist?) to a thin streak of blood across the collar of a starched white shirt to the pages of every old and unloved adult magazine in a crooked pile swelled up crisp with years of water damage to, finally, the first time you ever masturbated, and you're almost certain it's coincidental but that's the only image in your head as you come into Tyler's hand after what could have been two minutes or twenty--a collage of knobbly teenage knees and clumsy fingers and stained bedsheets, veins clear through your wrists like rivers on a map, a world of off-white, and, for a single, disoriented moment, you could almost be back there.

You could be anywhere but here. Tyler is jabbing his fingers into your mouth and you taste nothing, feel nothing, simply registering the movement limp and passive with your teeth pushed up around his knuckles; some nondescript tired noise wrapped in breath rises through your throat but can't find a way out, crushed in against your tongue, and that's when it all feels real again, that's the wake-up call, a claustrophobic mouthful of skin and salt and warm spit gathering quick. "What the fuck," you try to say, voice pouring out garbled around Tyler's fingers like a leak he can't quite plug, "what the fuck, Tyler, I can't--,"

They go in further. You're trying to bite but there's not enough leeway here and now, either--there never is. "Christ, shut up," Tyler says, "you're just making it worse for yourself," and you don't hear him for a moment after that because come is starting to drip slow in one thin thin string down your throat and something in you just seizes up, twisting and turning and churning, and that's it. "Oh-- _oh_ , shit--"

It happens fast, horribly fast, too fast to even register the process before it's already past-tense: Tyler pulls his hand back but nothing else, seemingly content to stand there and watch you folded in on yourself and heaving, thin watery waves of nothing rushing up through you, dribbling out your mouth and down your front, soaking into your shirt sticky and sickly and shaming. There's evidently nothing of substance in you but your gut makes do. Tyler is--laughing. "Shit, man," he says, obviously, inexplicably delighted, "shit, that's, that's perfect." 

Your mouth feels scraped clean and hollow but you're still coughing, hard. "Wh--what?"

"I mean, I was just gonna use spit, but this is--shit, it's like you knew." He's rubbing his fingers in it, scooping it up between them in strings, watching it drip with troubling fixation. Already it's the lye again: it's always the same things, the same feelings in a vague outline. A cyclic dream. "Your body knew. Right?"

"I don't know," you say, filled with the horrible feeling that you'll be here for a lot longer yet. Tyler's touching your thigh again--the back, this time, gripping you rough near the knee, fingers warm and wet. You feel ill. "What are you even talking about?"

"Don't play dumb," Tyler says, "it's not a good look for you. Besides--you said it was, and I quote, here, _okay_. Remember?"

"I--shit, Tyler, I don't know what--"

"Or did you think that was it? What, you thought I'd leave you like that?

"--leave me like _what_?" you say, not as firm as you'd like, weighed down by the trembling burn in your throat still. You're starting to forget how you got here and how long ago it was; everything seems too real to keep a hold on, like the passage of time flows straight through you, too. A small and distant part of you is wondering if, when you thought of yourself at some pitiful age, pale and slight and gasping to the touch, you got every part of it right. "What the _fuck_ are you talking about, Tyler?"

Tyler looks you over for a moment before saying, "this isn't going to work," and grabbing you by the hair and you know more or less what's coming but every thought to struggle just spills out of your head as it smashes back against where wall meets sink, violent, vibrant, a dampness spreading down the back of your shirt and matting into your hair. _Fuck, fuck, f_ \--the world flickers like the lights in your brain are going out; all breath flutters out of you like a murder of crows. "Okay," you hear, strange and distant, "shit, okay, that's better."

Tyler's hand strays down to your face, palm cupping your jaw: his fingers tremble, nails against your skin. "Yeah," he says, "much better." You open your mouth to speak but all that comes out is a long and aimless groan, spit-addled, pure noise; your head lolls to the side, towards your shoulder. You see red. "That's right. Just let me--"

There's a shuffle of fabric as he fiddles with his belt, you think, shucking his pants down his hips. You don't know how this happened. You--

-

(You dream, briefly, of a needle under your skin, drooling something thick and bright into your veins: it bubbles, inside, froths like foam against rock. You're in your happy place, alone, blissfully so, and you feel real. You feel right. 

_Wake up_ , something calls to you from outside, and you think of being wrapped up in bedsheets, a cocoon of warmth, soft hands on your shoulders--you're going to be late for school! But no, it's snowing, isn't it? You're fine. You don't have to be anywhere, today; nowhere but here, bathing in winter air, letting it clear out your body and seal your wounds all shut. _Come on, wake up_.

_No_ , you think, shifting onto your side, face pressed against the ground, untouched by the cold, _no. I don't want to and you can't make me. No. No, God, no, leave me_ \--)

-

"-- _alone_ ," you wake wheezing, thick and hoarse, weighed down by drowsiness, the world slowly drifting back into clarity. Your first observation: everything hurts. Soon after comes a second: Tyler is fucking you. Third: everything _hurts_ , enough that you wish you'd stayed unconscious, you wish you'd just woken nauseous and alone and unsure of everything, limping but doubtful, everything in theory. Here is reality: Tyler is fucking you, too dry, too rough, too much, and you can feel your body jerking, _heaving_ , with the way he moves against you, in you, _in_ you, _in you, Christ_ \--

"I'm here," Tyler says, breathless, pawing your face with one hand, palm against brow, "you're fine, I'm here," and you want to scream, you want to burst your throat out from the inside, dripping and creaking like a busted drainpipe, weeping saliva; you want pure destruction, deconstruction, to take yourself apart completely and utterly. There is nowhere else to go from here. He thrusts into you, right up to the hips, hunched over straining and aching and breathing out strange bitten-off noises above your head, and it takes you several hazy moments to find the sense in them: "do it," he is saying, "do it, do it, come on, go on," and you know, you think, that he wants just the same as you do. He might always have done. Your thighs touch right below the bunched-up waist of your pants and you could swear your skin melts into his. You could swear he goes down as deep as bone and further still.

Your head burns, growing-pains of the brain, and you scream bloody murder in what could be his voice--if only you could tell.

-

"Tyler," you say, eyes closed, sinking down, letting the bathwater swallow you up and clean you out (happy place, happy place, foam a little pink, last you looked, but isn't that better?), all your aches crawling towards the light, perfectly, utterly numb, "I think I might really be losing it."

His fingers brush through your hair. It's been two hours, or three, or maybe only one. You spent a little time on the floor, you know--time with your face cheek-down in a puddle of something you'd drooled out, _leaked_ out, throat too raw to cough, more of that shit that isn't quite spit nor entirely puke, stringy and scentless and vile--but how much, you can't tell. You know Tyler came back for you, face scrunched up, shaking you by the shoulder, _fuck, man, get a hold of yourself, already_ , so it must have been a while, or at least enough to trouble him. It must have been--

"Good," he says, nearer than you expected, "good," and then: "let's get you cleaned up."

 


End file.
